Burnout: the mystery of Space Shuttle STS-281 (20 page)

* * * *

After a dinner of chili dogs with all the extras, which proved surprisingly good, Phillips revealed his real reason for coming over. "Look, guys," he admitted, "I need some help. I know who you are," he glanced sagaciously at Murphy. "You're that Shuttle crash investigator that's supposed to be dead. Saw your picture on the TV and recognized you back at that gas station in Las Cruces. ‘Course, I didn't remember where I knew you from ‘til you'd already driven off. I knew something was bad wrong, though, because the television report was saying you'd died in a house fire, and, there you were, about as lively as Fat Albert at a buffet."

Phillips noticed the anxious glance that passed between Anders and Murphy, and tried to reassure them. "I didn't tell anybody. Don't worry. Your secret's safe, I swear. The red hair's good, too. Gonna take somebody several glances to decide it MIGHT be you. Looks real natural."

Then he focused his attention on Anders. "I don't know exactly who you are, Mike, but the way I figure it, if you're one of Mr. Murphy's friends, you got to be some kinda rocket scientist, too," Phillips added.

"Astronomer," Crash volunteered, giving in, as Anders shot him another glance.

"Er, yeah," Anders confirmed, uncomfortable. He had not been quite ready to yield and acknowledge themselves to this odd man.

"Oh, cool," Phillips grinned. "I wanna sit down and talk to you one of these days, then. Anyway, like I was saying, right now I need some help." He pulled his wallet out of his hip pocket and extracted a folded sheet of paper. "Look, I know that people think I'm some sort of nut. I know y'all do. I can see it in your eyes; I know what that look means. But I'm not. Back before the abduction, I worked for FedEx in Memphis. I was a ground crew chief, but after I pulled a stupid and admitted what happened, they let me go. Said they understood it was a stressful job, and sometimes people burned out. Said they couldn't risk having someone in that job they couldn't count on to stay cool if an emergency situation arose." He began spreading out the paper.

"You got fired?" Anders wondered.

"Well, they called it a ‘layoff,'" Phillips allowed, "but same as, yeah. I don't guess I blame ‘em, really. I'd probably do the same thing, in their shoes." He shrugged, somewhat despondent.

"That sucks," Murphy murmured in sympathy, wondering why on earth Phillips could possibly need them.

"Yeah. Anyway," an earnest Phillips continued, gazing at them, "I liked that job, and well, let's just say things haven't gone so good on the employment front since then. In fact, it sucks big time. What I need to do, is to prove I'm not some kook," he explained. "Then maybe I can either get my old job back, or find a decent one and hang onto it. I figure this is the way to do it, my ticket back to my old life." He handed them the sheet of paper.

Crash and Mike put their heads together, staring down in puzzlement at the images on the page. It was a photocopy from an original, and appeared to be a rubbing, produced with a pencil against some sort of etched panel. "Mmm… an aircraft panel?" Crash wondered under his breath, getting a whispered, "Beats hell outta me, mate," from Anders.

What both men found puzzling was the fact that neither of them recognized the inscriptions, let alone the symbols used for them. "Where did you get this?" Anders asked, looking up.

"Last abduction, I came prepared," Phillips declared, raising his chin in defiance. "I was sick and tired of everyone, even my family, calling me a nut. I decided I was going to prove I was telling the truth. The original is stashed away, someplace safe." The balding man got a very determined look on his face.

"They're nice, the scalies, the reptiles," he continued. "The greys, well, they're not so nice. But the reppies, they know I'm an okay joe. I talk to ‘em like regular guys, and they know I love to see the stars when they take me up. They usually give me a few minutes alone on the observation deck before bringing me home, sort of a little treat. There's a panel that controls the, uh, I guess you could call ‘em window shutters, for lack of a better word," Phillips decided. "So I got a rubbing of the panel." He nodded at the paper in Anders' hands. "Any chance you fellas can translate that for me?"

Anders and Murphy stared at each other. "Uhhh…" Anders muttered.

* * * *

Crash told Phillips he couldn't promise anything, but they'd take a look and talk to him the next morning, and the man left, leaving the photocopy in their care. Anders and Murphy plopped down on either side of the RV's little dining table. Anders spread out the paper on the table, and they bent over it.

"This is just getting weirder and weirder," Crash muttered in disbelief. "Do you really think this guy is… I mean, did he really get this… where he says he did?"

"I'm beginning to wonder," Anders murmured, thoughtful. "It's not anything I recognize. Maybe Russian Cyrillic?"

"No, it's not Russian," Murphy verified, studying the symbols. "I had to learn Russian for the Station program." He thought for a moment. "It doesn't even look like the Cherokee syllabary," he decided. "It doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before."

"Well," Anders concluded, "there's only one thing I can think of to do." He reached under the seat and pulled out his laptop, setting it on the dining table. "Let's get Carl's little software package working on it. The PC would be faster, ‘cause it's got more horsepower, but it's already tied up with the image data."

Crash's eyes grew big, then he frowned. "How the hell are you gonna do that? All we have is a photocopy. We don't even have a scanner to put this stuff into the computer."

Anders shrugged. "Use Roman letters and numerals," he decided. "Assign each symbol a figure from the laptop keyboard, and type it in that way. Then let the program crank."

Murphy thought for a moment, then cocked his head. "As good as anything, I suppose," he agreed. "You boot the laptop while I get the letters assigned."

"Deal."

* * * *

The rubbing was rather extensive, and it took some little while to code each symbol to letters and numbers and key the entire thing into the computer, but when it was done, the pair were reasonably certain that they had enough to be able to pull something out. "Now what?" Crash wondered.

"Now, we wait," Anders told him. "It took a bit of time for the software to crank it out last time. I expect it will be a few hours at least. Go back to bed and get some shut-eye, mate."

"What about you?" Crash asked, turning back toward the bedroom. "You need some more sleep sooner or later, too."

"I'm gonna crash right here on the sofa," Mike told him, suiting actions to words and pulling out the sofa bed. "That way, if the laptop gets anything, I'll hear the alert beep and I can get up to see what we've got."

Murphy pursed his lips. "Okay. Sounds reasonable," he decided. He disappeared into the back, then emerged in the doorway and chucked a pillow and blanket at Anders. "Here ya go, pal. Need anything else?"

"Nah," Anders said, shrugging. "Just my curiosity satisfied, that's all." He nodded in the direction of the laptop.

"That'd make two of us," Crash agreed.

Very soon thereafter, the RV was secured and dark; the only sounds inside were the hum of the computers and the soft snores of two exhausted men.

* * * *

It was in the wee small hours of the morning when Anders' laptop let out a very loud beep. Anders, startled from slumber, reflexively flung the blanket halfway across the tiny room as he sat up groggily. "Shit," he muttered. "Didn't think I'd fall that deep asleep."

Shaky, he got up and wobbled his drowsy way over to the dining table, sliding into the bench and angling the screen back a bit. He peered into the screen, then rubbed both eyes with his fists, trying to get the screen in focus.

Murphy appeared, silhouetted in the dim bedroom door. "Did I hear that blasted thing beep?"

"Yeah," Anders confirmed, voice still hoarse with sleep. "And if I can get my bloody eyes to work, I'll see what we've got. Do NOT turn on the damn light," he warned, hearing Crash's hand scrabbling against the wall. "You do, and I swear I'll finish what the blokes at your house started."

"Somebody's grumpy as all shit."

"Hell yeah."

Crash wandered over as Mike tried once more to get his eyes to focus on the screen's readout. This time, he was rather more successful. "Oh, for bloody hell," he blurted, then burst out laughing.

"What?" Crash asked, curious.

When Anders just kept laughing, pointing at the screen, Murphy came over to look. He peered over Mike's shoulder, then plopped down onto the bench beside Anders and rubbed his hands down his face. "Damnation," his muffled voice emerged from his hands.

The laptop's screen showed the translation software's window. At the top was the coded version they had entered. Beneath it read the translation:

In the event of an accident, this portal may be used as an emergency exit. To
activate the emergency exit, lift up on the lever to the right of this panel, then push the portal outward. An inflatable egress ramp will automatically deploy. In the event of a liquid landing, this ramp may be used as a life raft…

* * * *

They managed to get a little more sleep before Phillips came knocking the next morning. A very groggy Murphy and a decidedly grumpy Anders threw on enough clothing to be decent, and let him in.

"Did you get anything?" were the first, eager words out of Phillips' mouth.

"Yeah," Crash admitted, deciding that Mike needed some coffee--
no, make that espresso,
he amended--before being allowed to speak, "but it wasn't much, I'm afraid." He handed Phillips a printout of the translation. "Looks like some things are the same, the universe over."

Phillips read the text, then grinned at them, rueful. "Well, it isn't exactly earth shattering, is it?" he noted dolefully. "Probably won't get my job back." He sighed. "Listen, thanks, guys. I can tell you were up late last night doing this, so I won't bug ya any more. But if there's ever anything I can do for you, you just yell. I'll be here a few days yet. I'm meeting some fellow abductees, and we're going to go watch the Janet flights from the desert tomorrow. Maybe see how close we can get to the perimeter of the Area without getting caught. If you're interested," the genial little man offered, "give me a yell."

"Sure," Crash smiled. "Sorry we couldn't be of more help."

"Hey, the important thing is that you did prove it was writing, and that it could be translated," Phillips noted, ever the optimist. "That might get me something. Who knows?"

With a few more words of thanks, Phillips left. Anders checked the computer in the bedroom of the RV, finding it still working on the telemetry data. Then he and Crash went back to bed.

* * * *

"Crash… come here. I think I'm getting something," a much more cheerful Anders called, much later in the morning, and the red-headed man emerged from the back of the RV, hair still damp from his shower, buttoning his shirt.

"Ahhh… better for the extra snooze and shower, huh, Mike? Whatcha got?" Crash asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee before coming over to the dining table.

"I tried several different transform routines, and I think this one's cranking something out."

"An image from the data?" Murphy asked eagerly, sitting down beside his friend to watch.

"Yup. Dunno how good it'll be, but we'll have something to go on," Anders agreed. "Maybe enough to recognize if we see it."

The two men sat before the monitor and watched as the computer program built up a color image. It was grainy, and there were lots of white streaks running through it, where the program could not translate the data properly. But the globe of the Earth was clearly discernible, even if the colors were too subdued. Then Crash pointed.

"There."

Just above his fingernail was a small, black, oblong shape, superimposed over the Saharan desert.

"Can you blow it up?" Crash asked.

Anders bent over the keyboard and mouse, drawing a box around the imaged object. Then he commanded the program to enlarge the area enclosed in the box. Seconds later, the screen was filled with a mottled, low-resolution likeness of the unknown craft.

It was black; that could not be doubted. It was also small. Long and narrow, almost cigar shaped, the strange vehicle was sleek, smooth, and obviously aerodynamic: two wing-like protuberances flowed smoothly out of the main body, sweeping back toward the aft, where they tilted gracefully upward at the tips. At no time did the wings project far from the fuselage, however, and the overall effect was of a craft designed for speed and stealth. The rough silhouette of a figure could be discerned through what passed for a cockpit window. Crash frowned.

"We've got it," Anders whispered in awe, eyes sparkling with excitement. "The holy grail of space studies. Real evidence of an alien spacecraft." He shivered in agitation. "Damn."

"Must be another spaceship somewhere," Crash speculated, continuing to stare at the image.

"How you figure?"

"You really think he came from God only knows where in that little ship?" Crash answered skeptically, jerking a thumb at the laptop screen. "Bet he needs to stretch his legs… or tentacles, or… or whatever."